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Anthony Weiner: Obamacare is my word

New York City mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner is taking credit for coining the term "Obamacare." That point is debatable. When he was in Congress, the Democrat was a frequent guest on cable-TV shows during

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New York City mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner says he coined the term "Obamacare."

When he was in Congress, the Democrat was a frequent guest on cable-TV shows during the height of the 2009 debate over health care. Near the bottom of a New York Times article about Weiner's legislative record, the story of how he went from being a supporter of a single-payer system to a backer of the law advocated by President Obama is told.

Obamacare is "a term, by the way, that I coined," Weiner told The New York Times.

Here's what we know:

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is the law's formal name, and Obama signed it into law in 2010. It is now widely known as Obamacare, a word that has been used pejoratively by Republicans — but one that Obama himself started embracing during last year's presidential campaign.

Stories by The Washington Post and other media outlets often note Republicans began wide usage of Obamacare during the 2009-10 debate in Congress over the national health care law. The term would often be used in the same breath as "Hillarycare," a reference to the proposals advanced in the 1990s by then-first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.

GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney used the same juxtaposition as early as May 2007 during a campaign speech in Iowa. "Socialized medicine, Hillary-care, Obama-care, they don't get it," Romney said at the time, according to NBC News.

The first known use of Obamacare in print came three years before the legislation passed Congress. A 2011 story in The Atlantic says Jeanne Schulte Scott used the term in March 2007 in an article for the trade journal, Healthcare Financial Management, noting how health care was becoming a key issue in the 2008 presidential campaign.

"We will soon see a 'Giuliani-care' and 'Obama-care' to go along with 'McCain-care,' 'Edwards-care' and a totally revamped and remodeled 'Hillary-care' from the 1990s," Scott wrote.